Port of Port Townsend commissioners authorized seeking as much as $1,455,000 in funding assistance for the Point Hudson jetty replacement project with a second Boating Infrastructure Grant (BIG) application during the port’s April 26 meeting.

The port is allowed to apply for BIG grants annually. In 2015, the port was notified that its 2014 application was funded with $1,102,800, which represents 22 percent of the estimated $5 million total cost of the jetty replacement.

The port is working to designate that $1,102,800 for the south jetty.

The second BIG application, for 2017, authorizes applying for as much as an additional $1,455,000 for the north jetty.

“We anticipate we’ll need somewhere in the neighborhood of $600,000-$800,000. It’s not necessarily what we’ll be awarded, but it’s what we’re going to apply for,” said the port’s executive director, Sam Gibboney.

Gibboney said they were still “cranking the math” on the project and thus didn’t have a firm number for the application. She said that although the port expected it would apply for $600,000-$800,000 for the north jetty, the $1,455,000 figure was a high-end estimate.

“I doubt that we’ll be able to go that high … it is a very complicated formula. We just want to give ourselves some room for the authority from the commission to apply for up to that much,” Gibboney said.

The port’s matching share of project funding is to be derived from the port’s operating reserves fund.

Gibboney said that if the port were “wildly successful,” it might receive as much as $2.4 million total in BIG funds – about half of the total project cost.

REPLACEMENT IN 2018, 2019

The current project schedule anticipates demolition and replacement of the south jetty between July 2018 and February 2019. The north jetty would then be replaced between July 2020 and February 2021.

BIG is administered by the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office.

According to a 2016 report (http://goo.gl/049Lnz), the jetties were originally built in 1934 using creosote timber, armor rock and steel cables. The jetties were then rehabilitated in 1969 with new outer piles added. The jetties were again reinforced in 1996 with new piling, cables and rock.

The piles were found to be “beyond useful service life,” according to the report, with varying levels of deterioration. Some of the wood structure has “minimal contribution to structure stability” resulting in loss of rock confinement. More than 90 percent of some of the cabling was missing in some areas. The cables are caked with rust and are beyond their useful service life.

The south jetty is in worse condition than the north jetty, and the south jetty is also more critical in wave protection than the north, according to the port.

Cost of a major rehabilitation of the existing jetties would cost from one-half to three-quarters of the cost of complete replacement, according to the report.